TNA News

- James Storm is taking some time off to deal with some lingering injuries and is using his loss at Lockdown as the storyline explanation. Storm’s promo that aired on this week’s Impact Wrestling was done to write him out of current story lines. After the promo aired, Storm Tweeted the following:

Emotional time in my life after Lockdown.Need time to think about what I need to do and will not be making live events. I apologize.

- For those that missed it over the weekend, Hulk Hogan had some words on Twitter that ruffled some feathers. Hogan Tweeted one of his followers and said that going live would “solve 75% of the issues” in regards to problems with TNA. Both Hogan and Eric Bischoff are very big supporters of the company doing live television. Remember when they came into TNA back in 2010 they convinced Dixie Carter to not only move Impact to a live slot but to move to Monday nights to compete with WWE Raw. The move failed and Dixie Carter called it her single biggest mistake in the company’s history.

- For those that missed it, TNA Sacrifice will be headlined by Bobby Roode defending the TNA Championship against Rob Van Dam. Sacrifice will take place Sunday, May 13, 2012 from Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. We’ll have exclusive live play-by-play coverage here at WrestlingNewsWorld.com.

- David Otunga was with his fiancee Jennifer Hudson today at the murder trial of William Balfour in Chicago, Illinois. Balfour is accused of killing Hudson’s mother, brother and nephew in October 2008. Jennifer took the stand today and dissolved into tears when the prosecutor hander her a photo of her mom. For more on the trial, you can check out coverage by E! online and TMZ.

- Mister Saint Laurent reporting:

The first MLW World Champion “The Franchise” Shane Douglas joined Mister Saint Laurent on MLW Radio presented by www.AdamEve.com, the official podcast of Major League Wrestling. Douglas spoke about deciding to hold his own ECW reunion event after seeing how former ECW stars were treated by TNA during their ECW reunion event.

“After Dixie Carter did her show [Hardcore Justice] and paid the guys a ridiculous sum of money, $250 to go out there and do what we do better than most people do, that to me was just so disrespectful. For somebody who has been born and raised in a billion dollar household with a silver spoon in her mouth and up her backside, to ask guys to go out there and do that, for that little bit of money and then when it did better than any pay-per-view event in the last five years, didn’t even offer so much as an extra penny on top of it.”

“I said then and I stand by it, shame on you Dixie Carter that you’d expect anybody to do that in this day and age. At the same time she pays Ric Flair, 62, 63 years old, $35,000 a night. 60 year old Hulk Hogan, $75,000 a night and then somehow figures that these guys that come from ECW just don’t have any value or worth at all. I plan on disproving that.”

You can listen to the Shane Douglas episode of MLW Radio presented by AdamEve.com for FREE at www.MLW.com and on iTunes (search: MLW Radio) and syndicated via www.Stitcher.com

Other topics include:

-Working with Terry Funk and Funk’s philosophy on the “extreme” upstarts

-Why he wasn’t a part of WWE’s ECW relaunch

-Vince McMahon and Jim Ross picking his brain about ECW

-How he feels about Vince McMahon having now been a promoter himself

-What he would change about the education system

-Why he would never work as a teacher again

-Taz’s evolution from his days of intense ECW promos to his current announcing style

-Whether WWE will legally interfere with his ECW reunion

Also discussed was that on Monday, Konnan will debut his own MLW podcast, aptly titled MLW’s Konnan Show. You will be able to download and stream the show via www.MLW.com

MLW Radio is a new podcast series that’s being produced in conjunction with the MLW Digital Project, which is currently underway and includes the relaunching of www.MLW.com, the MLW tape library going online and several more yet to be announced features. You can find out more at www.MLW.com and www.Facebook.com/MajorLeagueWrestling

- TMZ has a new article online where Hulk Hogan is threatening legal action over recent black-and-white photos from his unauthorized sex tape surfacing on TheDirt.com. For those interested, click here for more. (Thanks to WNW reader Logan Walker for sending in the link.)

- The estimated buyrate for this month’s TNA Lockdown pay-per-view is approximately 17,000 buys. The company has been struggling to do at least 10,000 buys, with Victory Road doing a reported 7,000 buys.

- TNA has announced a “Basebrawl” live event from MCU Park In Brooklyn, New York on July 21, 2012. Tickets go on sale on May 21, 2012.

- Jim Varsallone of The Miami Herald has a new article online featuring quotes from TNA President Dixie Carter. Below is an excerpt:

Spike TV and TNA Entertainment recently agreed on a multi-year extension on their strategic partnership, maintaining Spike TV as the exclusive U.S. television home of the emerging property.

The previous deal with Spike was through the end of 2012, so the new deal extends the partnership after 2012..

Was there a Plan B?

“Absolutely,” Carter said. “We were very fortunate to have interest from a few very good networks, but in the end it made the most sense to stay with Spike. We’re very loyal, and they have spent a lot of money and effort and time in building our brand, and the deal was right. So we made the decision to stay there.”

Negotiations didn’t take long.

Carter explained: “When it came down to it, I just said, ‘If we’re going to do this, let’s make it simple, and let’s do it fast,’ and it happened that way. If not, we were going to need to go and do other things.

“So it was a quick negotiation.”

TNA “Impact Wrestling” is one of Spike’s top-rated series. The show currently ranks among the top shows on cable in its timeslot with Men 18-34.

Carter added: “We’re a unique property because we deliver the audience and the demos [demographics] two hours in primetime 52 weeks a year, and that’s almost unheard of in television with the exception of wrestling, news and morning programming. So a lot of people [TV execs] would like to have that.”

How is Ring Ka King doing?

“It’s going good,” she said. “We’re on a network that the timeslot is probably not best for wrestling, and we’ve had a lot of serious competition. So we knew it was going to be tough going in, but it’s been very well received, and I think there’s a very strong opportunity for Ring Ka King to continue to be seen in India.”

“In total, we have a tremendous amount of television exposure [in the UK] compared to the United States,” Carter said, “and I think that’s one reason why we’re having ratings success over there as compared to our competitors. For the year last year and this year to date, Impact is the number one viewed wrestling program in the United Kingdom.”

Spike TV’s highly-rated two-hour weekly series, TNA’s “IMPACT Wrestling” is moving to a new timeslot. On Thursday, May 31 “IMPACT Wrestling will air at 8:00pm ET/PT, moving from its previous timeslot of 9:00pm ET/PT.

The shift to 8:00pm is predicated on the fact that there are more available viewers in the 8:00-10:00pm timeslot with less sports competition in the 8pm hour.

TNA’s flagship series, “IMPACT Wrestling,” airs weekly on Spike TV and is one of the network’s top-rated series. The show is must-see-tv with young men and currently ranks among the top series on cable on Thursdays with Men 18-34.

The TNA roster features many of the top names in wrestling including Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy, Kurt Angle, Bobby Roode, Sting, James Storm, Rob Van Dam, and the lovely and lethal Knockouts.

About Spike TV:
Spike TV is available in 98.7 million homes and is a division of Viacom Media Networks. A unit of Viacom (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB), Viacom Media Networks is one of the world’s leading creators of programming and content across all media platforms. Spike TV’s Internet address is www.spike.com and for up-to-the-minute and archival press information and photographs, visit Spike TV’s press site at http://www.spike.com/press. Follow us on Twitter @spiketvpr for the latest in breaking news updates, behind-the-scenes information and photos.

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